PRESS RELEASE
17 December 2015
CTM 2016 – NEW GEOGRAPHIES
FESTIVAL FOR ADVENTUROUS MUSIC & ART, BERLIN
17TH EDITION, 29. JANUARY – 7. FEBRUARY 2016
FULL MUSIC PROGRAMME ANNOUNCED
We are pleased to reveal the full CTM 2016 music programme! From 29 January – 7
February 2016, the 17th edition’s New Geographies theme examines today’s rapidly
collapsing borders and emerging new hybrid topographies, and aims to provide the
tools needed to approach the complexities of a polycentric, polychromatic, and
increasingly hybrid (music) world with greater openness.
Special projects and commissions, as well as artists and sound cultures emanating from less familiar
countries and localities and often operating on the fringes of the electronic circuit are featured in
greater numbers than ever before. Notable input to the festival’s music programme is received from
guest co-curator Rabih Beaini, while the festival’s exhibition and daytime discourse programme is
created in close collaboration with Norient – Network for Local and Global Sounds and Media Culture.
The second wave of CTM 2016 artists are:
Le1f [US]
OG Maco [US]
Jlin [US]
Rødhåd [DE]
Visionist [UK]
Gesloten Cirkel [INT] Nidia Minaj [PT]
Night Lovell [CA]
Mumdance [UK]
nkisi [UK]
KABLAM [SE]
Esplendor Geométrico [ES]
Rabit [UK]
Gaika [UK]
André Bratten [NO]
Buttechno [RU]
zutzut [MX]
Baris K [TR]
Paul Marmota [MX]
Praed [LB/CH]
Slick Shoota [NO]
Hmot [RU]
Thug Entrancer [US]
Takuya Taniguchi [JP]
Why Be [INT]
Ateq [DE]
Resom [DE]
Native Instrument [INT]
gamut inc [DE]
Alienata [DE]
Purpurr Purple [NO]
Charlotte Bendiks [NO]
Low 808 [RU]
Mobile Girl [DE]
Kink Gong [FR]
Opium Hum [DE]
Beio [CN]
Disco Halal [INT] feat Moscoman, Delfonic, Autarkic & guests
A division of DISK / CTM – Baurhenn, Rohlf, Schuurbiers GbR • Veteranenstraße 21, 10119 Berlin, Germany
Tax Number 34/496/01492 • International VAT Number DE813561158
Bank Account: Berliner Sparkasse • BLZ: 10050000 • KTO: 636 24 508 • IBAN: De42 1005 0000 0063 6245 08 • BIC: BE LA DE BE
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With special projects and commissions
Rabih Beaini [LB] “The Red Right Hand” with Tommaso Cappellato [IT], Liz Allbee [US], Sharif
Sehnaoui [LB], Sam Shalabi [CA/LB], Daniele De Santis [IT/DE], Sofia Jernberg [NO / INT], Rully
Shabara [ID], Mazen Kerbaj [LB]
Iancu Dumitrescu & Ana-Maria Avram with Hyperion Ensemble featuring Stephen O’Malley [INT]
Christoph Schlingensief’s “African Twin Towers” re-played by Hanno Leichtmann & Carolin
Brandl [DE]
Anna Homler & Steven Warwick – “Breadwoman” [US]
Love Cult & Alina Filippova – “Nada” [RU]
Pedro Reyes — “Disarm (Mechanized)” [MX]
Read more on the festival’s theme New Geographies, and on the previously announced programme
on our website.
A limited number of festival passes are on sale, and tickets to individual events are gradually being
made available this month, into January. Press accreditation is open until 5 January 2016.
Stay tuned as we announce our full exhibition and daytime programme in January.
› ctm-festival.de
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SPECIAL PROJECTS & COMMISSIONS
Complementing the previously announced commissioned works, special projects, and premieres are:
CTM 2016 OPENING CONCERT WITH
RABIH BEAINI & VINCENT MOON
Throughout past and present, trance rituals and spiritual journeys have perhaps served as the most
powerful methods of detaching us from the material in order to communicate and chase new worlds
where all borders are dissolved. CTM 2016’s Opening Concert unites two explorations of how to reach
the unbound. With “Híbridos”, wanderer, independent filmmaker and sound researcher Vincent Moon,
previously announced with an installation that will be on display all festival week at HAU2, creates a
portrait of a contemporary Brazil as a laboratory of cultures, suggesting a path of coexistence and
open geography. Through a lecture and screening of his transmedia project created with
photographer, writer and director Priscilla Telmon, Moon explores what people who didn’t break their
connection with planet earth, or are going back to that connection, have to tell us as a new way of
living together via a cine-trance of emotions, words, gestures, silences, and intuitions.
CTM guest co-curator Rabih Beaini then premieres “For The Right Red Hand”, a work especially
composed for CTM that divides an ensemble of eight instrumentalists into two mirroring groups of
trumpet (Liz Allbee, Mazen Kerbaj), guitar (Sam Shalabi, Sharif Sehnaoui), drums (Daniele De
Santis, Tommaso Cappellato), and voice (Sofia Jernberg, Rully Shabara). Although identical in
instrumentation, the two groups at times create opposing and conflicting counterpoints, tensions, and
uneasy coexistence. Through barely audible tones, repetition, and extended techniques, this interplay
of standpoints is punctuated and gradually enhanced by Beaini at the mixing desk, reaching a
cohesive, open geography of human spirit.
IANCU DUMITRESCU AND ANA-MARIA AVRAM
WITH HYPERION ENSEMBLE AND STEPHEN O’MALLEY
Romanian composers Iancu Dumitrescu and Ana-Maria Avram take over Berghain with their own
Hyperion Ensemble and guitarist Stephen O’Malley. CTM’s presentation of Dumitrescu and Avram
continues the festival’s tradition of celebrating international pioneers in experimental and electronic
music. The two have long acted as central figures in the spectralist movement in contemporary
composition. By exploring the phenomenological, dynamic presence of sound, and composition as an
experience of constant change rather than as a contained, pre-formatted object, this movement
opened up new sonic territories.
Although the Hyperion Ensemble has undergone transformations in personnel since its early days, it
has remained consistent in philosophy and intention. Its twelve members come from Romania, Israel,
UK, US, France, and Germany.
Sunn O))) co-founder and all-around musical trailblazer Stephen O’Malley appears as a special guest
soloist with the ensemble before sonically expanding on Sunn O)))’s principles with a solo live concert.
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CHRISTOPH SCHLINGENSIEF’S “AFRICAN TWIN TOWERS”
RE-PLAYED BY HANNO LEICHTMANN & CAROLIN BRANDL
Berlin-based producer and sound artist Hanno Leichtmann and filmmaker Carolin Brandl’s joint
project reworks film footage and surviving soundtrack fragments from African Twin Towers by the late
filmmaker and theatre director Christoph Schlingensief. Lauded as one of the most important and
subversive German voices of his generation, Schlingensief’s largely dialogue-free film, African Twin
Towers, was never completed. It took as its central themes Richard Wagner, Herero shamanism,
colonial history and guilt, crisis in Africa, German megalomania, and Norse mythology among others,
to create a swirling, suffocating, destabilising and powerful investigation of the African poverty crisis.
The country’s high daily mortality rate, resulting either from cruel civil wars, hunger or AIDS, can still
be traced back to the aftermath of Western colonial policy and an ongoing apathy from world leaders.
The film’s ambiguous title draws a comparison between the thousands of daily African deaths and the
th
terrorist attacks of September 11 , which distract from the majority of other world issues and continue
to be instrumentalised for counter-terrorist rhetoric in the Western world. As Schlingensief had
foreseen and intended for his film, Leichtmann and Brandl’s performance is a visually stunning
psychedelic tribute and reinterpretation with dynamic musical accompaniment where the subjectivity of
the director is contrasted by the subjectivity of the observer.
The same programme presents Laurent Jeanneau’s ethnographically-informed compositional project
Kink Gong. Since 1999, Jeanneau has gone on nomadic quests to faraway corners of Asia and
collected video and audio recordings of local sonic traditions and “ethnic minority music”, mostly
featuring vocals and percussion. Next to publishing these recordings on labels such as Sublime
Frequencies, he transforms and re-composes these documents into original experimental
soundscapes.
LOVE CULT AND ALINA FILIPPOVA “NADA” / BUTTECHNO
Northwest Russia’s goth-jungle, gloom-worshipping duo Love Cult and the like-minded filmmaker
Alina Filippova premiere a new audiovisual concert project. Love Cult, who make murky, esoteric
music as an outlet “for worries and fears”, are tastemakers in a flourishing Russian music
underground. “Nada” utilizes a kind of “instant filmmaking”; Filippova edits b-rolls live and compiles adlib sequences of images from her footage archive as the musicians play a combination of improvised
soundscapes and pre-composed material in parallel. Most of the images were shot in Filippova’s own
small, sleepy hometown of Lebedyan and explore themes of ennui and intergenerational tension.
Boredom, frustration, anger and latent aggression are also themes in the evening’s second
audiovisual performance. With abstract sounds and very straightforward images of his own home
surroundings, fellow Russian and CTM Siberia artist Buttechno offers another incisive look onto
current moods and worlds of Russian youth. Announced earlier this week, Love Cult also appear for a
more beat-oriented DJ se tat the CTM x Red Bull Music Academy Afterparty at Watergate, while
Buttechno also plays a b2b DJ-set with Low808 at Panorama Bar (see below).
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ANNA HOMLER AND STEVEN WARWICK “BREADWOMAN”
Also confirmed is a resurrection and first-time CTM appearance of the DIY myth-making performance
art- and music project “Breadwoman” by Anna Homler & Steven Warwick aka Heatsick.
Breadwoman is the 1980s brainchild of Anna Homler and Steve Moshier, two interdisciplinary artists
from Los Angeles. Their curious collaboration adopted the visual figurehead of baguette-toting woman
who’s “so very old she’s turned into bread”. This nameless, origin-less, and language-less character
stands for Moshier’s and Homler’s valuing of music as primitive, futuristic, ritualistic, theatrical, and
mythical, and of the voice as a sonic element more than an arbiter of meaning. Homler sings in a
made-up language over Moshier’s drenched, locomotive loops. The collaboration was marked with a
th
cassette release in 1985, which has upon its 30 anniversary recently been reissued as Breadwoman
and Other Tales by Brooklyn’s RVNG Intl. For this performance, Homler is joined by an extra theatrical
performer and by Stephen Warwick, who will rework the project’s original music.
PEDRO REYES [MX] – “DISARM (MECHANIZED)”
Mexican artist Pedro Reyes’s work is a socio-political critique on contemporary society and our
responsibility towards it. His large-scale projects are catalysts for communal and psychological
transformation, triggering group interaction and creativity.
Presented within the CTM 2016 exhibition together with Norient’s “Seismographic Sounds. Visions of a
New World”, “Disarm (Mechanized)” relates to two of Reyes's previous projects: “Palas por Pistolas
(2007)” in which citizens of the Mexican state of Sinaloa donated a total of 1,527 weapons through a
campaign, which were then turned into 1,527 shovels to plant 1,527 trees; and “Disarm (2012)”, in
which seized and subsequently destroyed firearms were used to fabricate musical instruments.
“Disarm (Mechanized) 2013” comprises six mechanized musical instruments, created in collaboration
with Mexico City-based media workshop COCOLAB. Fabricated from parts of revolvers, shotguns, and
machine-guns, these instruments intermittently play in the exhibition space as musical automatons.
A large part of today’s world politics has been hijacked by the weapons industry, fuelling conflict
around the world for the sole purpose of profit. Most of the time, the blame goes to whoever pulls the
trigger, while the companies that manufacture these weapons and the political states that sell them
somehow manage to escape proper scrutiny. Disarm is a project that hopes to remind us that living in
an environment free of weapons ought to be a human right, and that it is within our means to transform
agents of death into instruments of life. If we can turn a weapon into a musical instrument, hopefully,
that physical transformation could lead to a psychological and social transformation.
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CTM 2016 CLUB AND CONCERT PROGRAMME
This year, CTM sets a vigorous pace from its very first day. On Friday 29 January, directly following
the CTM 2016 Exhibition Opening, Panorama Bar pays a nod to the North with sounds from Russian
artists Low 808 from Ghost Zvuk Records, as well as Buttechno and Hmot, both familiar faces from
the CTM Siberia initiative that explored the region’s thriving yet little-known music scene this past
September. They are joined by Norway’s refined emoter André Bratten and his compatriot and lushlife advocate Charlotte Bendiks, as well Berlin’s Rødhåd, a wizard of sullen, brooding techno, who
will DJ a back-to-back set with Giegling’s Ateq.
Saturday’s club night at Werkstatt der Kulturen honours the hyped Mexican label NAAFI with
appearances by two of the label’s most important producers, zutzut and Paul Marmota. The Puerto
Escondido-based initiative and collective, like Berlin’s Janus crew, assembles and absorbs musical
trends from the world over at a steady clip. zutzut, whose newest release El Pack Vol. 1 came out
earlier this year, synthesizes baile funk, dembow, and kudoro with the consistent momentum of club
music, and Paul Marmota, NAAFI’s A&R manager, specializes in “future reggaeton”, dancehall, plena,
house, and grime. The same night features an appearance by Praed, a Lebanese-Swiss duo
consisting of Raed Yassin on electronics and Paed Conca on clarinet. Using experimental electronic
music and free jazz methodologies, Praed tweak tropes from Middle Eastern popular music into
swirling pieces that play with notions of kitsch, trash and the exotic in surprising ways.
Berghain’s programme welcomes live AV performances by Visionist in collaboration with Kevin Bray,
and American producer Thug Entrancer, whose new “microjuke” LP Death After Life was recently
released on Daniel Lopatin’s Software Recording Co. to wide acclaim. The two will join premieres from
Marija Bozinovska Jones aka MBJ Wetware w JG Biberkopf, and Marcin Pietruczewski.
NYC rapper, producer, and style icon Le1f is a trailblazer in a growing, fiercely creative hip-hop scene
especially welcoming to gender fluidity, playfulness, and identity exploration. He joins a line-up with
previously announced artists Lena Willikens, group A, Aisha Devi & Tianzhuo Chen who are joined by
Chinese dancer and performer Beio, and Tara Transitory aka One Man Nation. That same night,
Panorama Bar will welcome the afro-portuguese beat-weaving of the young producer and Principe
Discos newcomer Nidia Minaj, and Jlin who, after the release of no more than one LP and one 12” on
Planet Mu, has already made a name for herself (including having her Dark Energy LP top best album
of 2015 charts at FACT, Resident Advisor, The Quietus, Crack and more) by virtue of radical and
original footwork patterns. Berlin favourite and Janus resident Kablam adds to the excitement by
finding imaginative points of entry in contrasting genres. Last but not least, Non Records affiliate
Melika Ngombe Kolongo, or nkisi, plays everything from gabber to doomcore to Central- and West
African club tracks. A collective of artists from the African diaspora, Non Records aims to create
“sound opposed to contemporary cannons.”
Joining Kassem Mosse and T'ien Lai at Berghain on 5.2 is reticent acid mastermind Gesloten Cirkel,
who released his latest M-011/M-012 on Murder Capital in September. Gesloten Cirkel’s virtuosity and
sophistication have turned him into a cult favorite over the years; a better person to hold the reigns
during peak hour at Berghain is hardly imaginable. Industrial band Esplendor Geometrico was
formed in Madrid in the early 1980s. Their gritty sounds incorporate Arabic and Chinese influences
and have garnered them performances and collaborations with members of Throbbing Gristle, Coil,
and Chris and Cosey. German-born Alienata fuses “deep analogue textures, dark, sexual hybrids,
cosmic rhythm, and aquatic electro” in a night rounded out by DJ Opium Hum. Up in Panorama Bar,
previously-announced Honey Dijon and Mikael Seifu will be joined by Istanbul’s Baris K, all-vinyl DJ
Resom, and Romanian-born SHAPE platform alumnus Borusiade, whose upcoming 2016 EP,
Jeopardy, will come out on Chilean-born Matias Aguayo’s forward-thinking Cómeme imprint.
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CTM’s second Saturday moves over to YAAM. The evening has been planned in collaboration with the
new Berlin-based promoter group Temp Affairs. Close associates of the Weboogie collective, Temp
Affairs recently hosted a festival exhibiting cloud rap, crunk, grime, trap and other younger hip-hop
variants. 23-year-old Atlanta rapper Maco Mattox or OG Maco, best known for his 2014 single “U
Guessed It”, brings his muggy, sparse sound; Brixton native and Warp Records affiliate Gaika, who
converts the hyper-real urban chaos of London into otherworldly, presents glitchy, somber collages.
Staycore affiliate mobilegirl and Canadian sensation Night Lovell also join the roster. The young
Ottawa native recently added significant fuel to cloud rap culture with his catchy, melancholy mixtape
Concept Vague. Oslo-based Slick Shoota, whose high-octane sets draw inspiration from disparate
sources like jungle and footwork, takes the same stage. Rabit’s “subzero grime turns clubs inside out”
(FACT Mag), while Purpurr Purple, one of Slick Shoota’s regular partners in crime, zooms in on a
host of subgenres. Berlin’s DJ Yung Boo Khaki or Why Be, who was recently snatched up by Rabit’s
label Snipestreet, pulverizes with his “macabre bangers”, and Brighton-based Mumdance, who
appears at CTM for the second time, is at this point a household name in innovative grime.
rd
The entire evening in YAAM’s 3 room will be curated by Berlin-based (by way of Egypt and Israel)
Disco Halal, a group that collects and edits original dance music from the Arab world. Label boss
Moscoman, Berlin nightlife mainstay and DJ Delfonic, Tel Aviv’s cold wave scene rep Autarkic, and
a special surprise guest join the bill.
Each year, HAU Hebbel am Ufer provides environments of contemplation and discovery through its
neighbouring HAU1 and HAU2 theatres. Additions to the previously announced performances taking
place at these venues include Native Instrument, a Berlin-based duo featuring field recording
archivist and sound artist Felicity Mangan and vocalist Stine Janvin Motland, who add to an evening
including performances by Fis and Rob Thorne. Their “peculiar, mellow insect techno” reveals
ambiguities and resonances between pure and manipulated native sounds, vocals, and electronicallygenerated sounds. Berlin’s gamut inc. joins Jerusalem in My Heart on another evening. This
ensemble’s navigation of unfamiliar territory takes the form of a kind of sonic archaeology; they
uncover pre-modern music-making technologies and concepts that embody a similar conceptual or
experimental rigor as the contemporary avant-garde, and combine them with recent technology to
build stunning electro-acoustic instruments bridging the very old and the very new.
This second announcement adds to the previously-announced line-up which features special projects:
Pauline Oliveros w Ione [US] / multilogue performance w Keiji Haino [JP], Kazuhisa Uchihashi
[JP], and Rully Shabara & Wukir Suryadi [Senyawa, ID] / an evening with Lebanese singer Abdel
Karim Shaar and band [LB]
Commissioned works and premieres by:
Fis & Rob Thorne [NZ] / Peder Mannerfelt [SE] / Vincent Moon [FR] / Marija Bozinovska Jones
aka MBJ Wetware w JG Biberkopf [MK/LT] / Deena Abdelwahed [TN] / Sharif Sehnaoui w Omar
Rajeh & Malek Andary [LB] / Evelina Domnitch & Dmitry Gelfand w Paul Prudence [INT] / Marcin
Pietruszewski [PL] / Aïsha Devi feat. Tianzhou Chen [INT]
And artists whose voices collectively echo a multiplicity of sonic identities:
Floating Points live [UK] / Tara Transitory aka One Man Nation [INT] / Jerusalem in My Heart
[INT] / group A [JP] / Lena Willikens [DE] / Maurice Louca [EG] / Kassem Mosse [DE] / Pole &
MFO [DE] / The Dwarfs of East Agouza [INT] / Sublime Frequencies [US] / Mikael Seifu [EY] /
Honey Dijon [US] / T’ien Lai [PL] / Nan Kolè [IT] / DJ Lakhe [ZA] / Ah! Kosmos [TR]
All supported by CTM’s exhibition:
Seismographic Sounds. Visions of a New World exhibition by Norient.
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TICKETS, FESTIVAL PASSES, AND PRESS ACCREDITATION
CTM 2016 Passes and CTM / transmediale 2016 Connect Passes that grant access to both festivals
remain available. Press accreditation is open until 5 January 2016.
Tickets to other individual events are now available for certain events. Further event tickets will
become available later this month and into January. Please note that tickets to both Friday Berghain
events (29.1. and 5.2.) may only be purchased at the door.
For more information and to purchase, please visit the festival’s ticket shop.
PRESS CONTACT
FESTIVAL CONTACT
Guido Möbius
› [email protected]
› +49 (0) 30 29002161
CTM Festival
Veteranenstr 21, 10119 Berlin
› [email protected]
› +49 (0)30 4404 1852
PARTNERS & SPONSORS
Funded by:
Hauptstadtkulturfonds | Federal Cultural Foundation of Germany | Goethe-Institut
Federal Foreign Office | Creative Europe Programme of the European Union | Musicboard Berlin
In Cooperation with:
transmediale 2016 | Kulturprojekte Berlin GmbH | HAU Hebbel am Ufer | Berghain | Yaam
Heimathafen Neukölln | Kunstraum Kreuzberg / Bethanien | Astra Kulturhaus | Werkstatt der Kulturen
Where is Jesus? | Watergate
Programme partners:
Norient | ICAS | SoCCoS | SHAPE | ENCAC | Deutschlandradio Kultur Hörspiel / Klangkunst
ORF musikprotokoll im steirischen herbst | ORF Musikprotokoll Kunstradio | Create Digital Music
DAAD | Intonal Festival | Metal | Donaufestival | Barbican
Institutional Partners:
Stimuleringsfonds | Music Norway | Pro Helvetia | Romanian Cultural Institute | Polish Institute Berlin
Institut Français | Musik i Syd | Embassy of Canada | Quebec Delegation of Berlin
Sponsors:
Ableton AG | Native Instruments | Carhartt | Complete Audio
Media partners:
NTS Radio | The Wire | Crack | Resident Advisor | RBMA Radio | Groove | XLR8R | Noisey
Deutschlandradio Kultur The Quietus | Die Tageszeitung | Radio eins | The Gap | Ask Helmut
Jungle World | Berliner Fenster
This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication [communication] reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission
cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
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